


That's What They Say (When We're Together)

by Lightningcatters (Phoeliac)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Lilia and Minako are Yuuri's coaches, M/M, References to Depression, Yakov and Lilia have Things To Work Out, Yuuri and Victor are meant to be Epic Rivals on the battlefield of post-divorce pettiness, they fall in love instead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-21 05:44:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11351085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoeliac/pseuds/Lightningcatters
Summary: In the wake of her divorce from Yakov, Lilia ran off to Japan and became Yuuri's coach alongside Minako. She returns to Russia with a challenge for Yakov, who's become increasingly concerned about Victor's lack of motivation.Victor and Yuuri ruin everybody's plans by falling in love instead of becoming rivals.[Written for a kink meme prompt request for Lilia & Minako as Yuuri's coaches.]





	That's What They Say (When We're Together)

**Author's Note:**

> Saw [this](https://yurionicekink.dreamwidth.org/881.html?thread=126833#cmt126833) prompt: _After her divorce Lilia comes to Hasetsu to spend time with her old friend and rival Minako, she discoveres Yuuri and decides to coach him to compete against Yakov's skaters, including Victor (she gets Minako to help too, and while they coach Yuuri together maybe old feelings bloom and they get involved). Lilia and Yakov want Yuuri and Victor to be bitter rivals but they get close instead and fall in love Romeo and Juliet style, balcony scene included._
> 
> Immediately went "YES", then proceeded to write 2000 words of set-up, then forgot about it for three months - my bad D: 
> 
> Hopefully this will be an entertaining little stop-gap until either I or someone else fill the rest of the prompt, but consider this a standalone that may sprout legs? It's different from my previous fare so, let me know what you think :D
> 
>  **Edit:** So this turned out different to what I expected and will definitely be continued! I am the slowest writer on this sweet earth however, so apologies in advance for the time between updates!

Civility is expected at these events and when Yakov turns to find Lilia looming out of the crowd, gliding toward him like an elegant glacier, he plasters on his least displeased grimace. She notices, judging by the arch of her carefully carved brow, and he can't help feeling like he's already lost whatever competition they've not yet started.

They exchange polite greetings. She says “good evening, Yakov” as if it rhymes with “ _you are a miserable failure of a man“_ . He says “it's always lovely to see you, Lilia”, and he means “ _loving you was like loving cut glass”_ just as much as he means “ _I know”_.

The silence is taut – a bowstring drawn between the grim line of his mouth, and the edge of her immaculate eyeliner. She is unmoving as she ever was, commanding attention through sheer existence. Lilia is a fixed point of impassive silence, the hubbub of the event hall orbiting round her and Yakov can't quite tear himself out of the pull of her presence.

"I heard you were playing coach in Japan," spills out of his mouth.

As conversation starters go it sits somewhere between "how's the weather" and self-immolation.

Her mouth twitches - amusement, rather than offence, he can still read that much from her at least - and she folds her hands delicately together.

"And you’re still playing crèche mother," she says lightly, "how _are_ the rabble?"

Yakov thinks of Georgi crying over his latest failed romance; Mila's affection that's only this far removed from outright violence; of little Yurochka's **actual** violence.

He grunts and drinks from his glass. Lilia wears the ghost of a smirk. His chest echoes with familiarity and, for the first time in years, he feels clumsy. Leaden. Like the shaved bear Lilia had more than once described him as.

“And your boy. Vitya?”

Her tone is neutral now. She knows, has known, all throughout their marriage, what Victor means to Yakov. Lilia has never insulted the man, but he knows she was never fond of him either. Which is fair. Sometimes Yakov’s not too fond of him, either.

But still, he bristles, as King Idiot of his gaggle of Idiot Ducklings swims to the front of his mind. Victor, listless and grey where he was once a frenetic tangle of energy and colour, threaded into the shape of a person. Born to give Yakov conniption after conniption. The curve of Victor’s mouth is a mockery of real emotion now, even in Yakov’s mind. Something running both deeper and shallower than his Practiced Paparazzi smile.

The ulcer in Yakov’s stomach throbs.

For a second, Lilia looks softer. A trick of the light, he assumes, shifting around her to ease concern into the high arch of her brow. He narrows his eyes at her.

There is a memory, unfurling tendrils behind his forehead, tickling and tugging as it demands his attention. A memory of attempts at comfort, fumbling and failing, but attempted all the same. Lilia’s soft, sad eyes, and an outstretched hand.

Her eyes aren’t sad now, and her palms are tucked into each other. But separation hasn’t eroded understanding, and he knows that she hears loudly what he’s pointedly not saying, swallowing the words with a swig of his drink.

“I always told you...” she starts, while Yakov mimics her raised brow over his glass at her. She ignores him, and continues.

“Nothing forces focus like competition, Yakov.”

He can’t help the laugh that barks out of him.

“Vitya _has_ no competition.”

And hasn’t that always been the problem? The cherubic child who’d been deposited under his watchful eye had grown up into a bored, impish adult. Victor’s seen all, done all, and is a poor liar to anyone who knows him well enough to tell the difference between the On-Camera face and the Off-Camera one.

Yakov’s gut has, for the past few months, been twining around itself, knotting and tugging painfully. The largest knot is named Victor.

He is pulled from his rumination by the slow creep of _something_ across Lilia’s face. She doesn’t smirk so much as her face is briefly caressed by the ghost of one; it still makes him pause, warily bringing the tumbler of his drink down to his side.

Lilia’s eyes follow the movement, then flick back up to his face. She blinks, once, slowly.

“Historically, perhaps,” her tone is just breezy enough to feign halfway convincing nonchalance, “but this season…”

“Your little experiment?” He grumbles - doesn’t dare scoff. He’s long learned the lesson of underestimating Lilia in any form.

She fixes him with a hard stare. He can see himself reflected back in it. He tightens his fingers around his drink.

She’s found something, he realises. Something she cares about more than beauty, than the work. It’s actually sparked something approaching interest, though he’s loath to admit it. He says nothing, watches her as he raises his glass and sips from it.

It had always infuriated her when he’d done that, continued on regardless in the middle of an argument. Unflinching under barbed words that, in another household, would have been shouted rather than curled cruelly around one another, like being embraced by thorns.

“Funny. My ‘experiment’”, she bites out, “is the best offer you’ve had in a long while.”

“It’s been a while since you propositioned me,” he mutters, just the wrong side of petulant.

“I am returning to Russia.”

She says it like was inevitable. As if she didn’t disappear to the other side of the world for years without sending word to anyone. She continues, gracefully steamrolling over anything Yakov might have to say.

“My student is coming with me.”

“Does this student have a name?” He asks, and Yakov is sure he can hear the sound of a trap clacking shut.

“You’ll have plenty of time to learn it,” she says, as though she’s discussing the weather and not attempting something Yakov’s been reliably informed is called shit-talking, “while your Vitya’s looking _up_ at him from the podium.”

There’s an idea itching under Yakov’s skin; Lilia’s digging her way in there too, and he considers it.

Victor isn’t competitive, in the usual sense, largely because Victor’s never _had_ competition. Yakov doubts Lilia’s student is anywhere approaching a threat, but then...but then he’s _Lilia’s_ student, and every inch of Lilia is menace.

Yakov takes one last, long pull of his drink. He swallows, inhales sharply between his teeth. Finally, he nods.

“Bring your boy to the rink,” he allows a smile that feels more like a grimace, “we’ll see what competition he can be.”

They exchange numbers again, as though there’d never been a point where they didn’t know one another’s phone numbers off by heart. As though they hadn’t built a life together, then torn it down with their own shaking hands.

  

\- - - - - -

 

They exchange numbers, and then words, and then ideas. It’s almost like they’re old friends, reacquainted after a distance of circumstance, instead of by papers signed in a lawyer’s office. Lilia is aggressive in a way Yakov doesn’t remember suiting her - she seems freed by the expectations of rivalry.

He receives a text a week before Katsuki is due to start training at the rink.

 

 _[10:03]L.B:_ _there are to be rules, yakov_

 

_[10:06] of that I have no doubt_

 

He types back, half his attention focused on Yuri, who is screeching about something Mila said.

 

The space between Lilia's messages is almost disdainful, and when Lilia replies, Yakov can’t help the wry grin creeping across his face.

 

_[10:11]L.B: your boy won’t know what hit him_

And then, as if an afterthought:

 _[10:12]L.B:_ _)))_

 

Whatever was in Japan, Yakov thinks, has been a terrible influence on Lilia.

He’s almost looking forward to it.

 

\- - - - - -

 

It takes three seconds for Yakov to realise he's made a terrible mistake.

Lilia had told him her student’s name, so Yakov had googled the boy - and that’s what Yakov had assumed of him, looking at the handful of grainy photos and youtube clips. He looked about twelve, all puppy fat and angelic countenance.

He’d had a horrible, heart-thudding moment when he found Katsuki’s wikipedia page and realised said ‘boy’ is in his twenties.

 

In person, however, Katuski just...is.

 

Shortish, a little softness to his form. He has neither the sharp lines nor imperious presence usually possessed by those passing through the fierce gamut of Lilia's tutelage. Yakov's not even sure he'd be able to pick him out of a crowd if asked. But there's a determination to his movements, a strength that belies the hours of training, the dedication of his work.

Yakov is expecting a severe expression, defiance and disdain all together in one. He braces himself for the echo of Lilia’s expression when Katsuki finally graces them with his gaze. Lilia’s mantra had been devastating beauty hewn from the roughest of stone and Yakov expects marble, a statue of a person.

Instead, Katsuki Yuuri looks up at them with big, dark eyes and there’s a sinking sensation in his gut as someone stops suddenly behind him, and he hears a breathless, reverent " _oh_ ".

Yakov turns to find Viktor staring, starry-eyed and gaping down at Katsuki. Then he shoots Lilia an alarmed look.

 

 _Shit,_ he thinks. _Shit. Fuck. Shit._

 

Lilia’s eyes are sharp, knife-edged, as Victor offers his hand to Katsuki to shake. Katsuki takes it, and Victor immediately bends to to brush his mouth, curved in a brilliant smile, across the boy’s bony knuckles.

 _Now_ her face turns dangerous, like the crackle before lightning strikes. It’s satisfying to see, in a petty sort of way. That feeling gives way almost immediately in the face of the two buffoons giving each other awestruck little grins.

The stroke Yakov’s been expecting since he first met Victor feels distressingly imminent, and as Lilia’s eyes narrow, Victor _winks_.

Yakov drags Victor away before he murders the idiot himself.

"Yakov," Victor gushes, grinning moronically, either unaware or utterly uncaring of how close to death he just came, "Yakov, I think I'm _in love._ "

Looking back, at the thunderous cloud that is Lilia, at Katsuki, who’s touching the back of his hand gently, Yakov very carefully says nothing. He finds his office, shoves Victor into a chair and - calmly, ever so calmly - makes sure the door is shut behind them.

His fingers fumble on the handle; Victor’s amusement a weight in the air that has Yakov twitchy, puts a glower on his face when he turns back to his pupil.

“ _Do not_ befriend _the enemy_ , Vitya.”

Victor says nothing. Instead he gives Yakov with an infuriatingly light look - an expression Yakov’s seen before, usually shortly before Victor goes and does whatever the hell it was he wanted to do anyway.

Yakov moves to sit at his desk, across from him. He’s not sure how best to impress upon Victor that this pleasant-faced boy is a threat - or is meant to be. Yakov doesn’t doubt that Lilia has trained and taught Katsuki in the art of taking his opponents apart; she was a master of reducing students, grown men and women, _Yakov_ , to bare bones. Skeletal remains, stripped down as much by words as by sheer will.

Yakov has taken one look at Victor’s face, interest obvious in every feature, and he is...unsettled.

“Enemy is a bit strong, Yakov,” Victor teases, “you invited him to train here, yes?”

Enemy doesn’t even begin to cover what Katsuki is in Yakov’s head, now he’s seen him. If he’d not had Lilia by his side, Yakov thinks he might even have fallen for the boy himself - been taken in by the doe-eyes and unbearable softness.

“You do not know why he is here. What he could possibly be up to. What Lilia intends.”

Yakov’s not sure now what she intended, either. For all the talk of rivalry, of motivation, she’d looked as startled as he did - but Lilia was always a blank slate, and who’s to say she didn’t spend her time away learning how to lie?

It’s not beyond her, beyond how they finished things, for Katsuki to be part of some larger game, to twist and trap Victor in... _something_.

Victor’s look turns skeptical. As though he can read Yakov’s mind, and knows how ridiculous the images Yakov’s torturing himself with are. Victor heart-broken, Victor running away because _Romance_ , Victor turning back in on himself, dead-weight on the ice even as he moves like vapour across its surface.

He stares at Yakov. Yakov stares back. Eventually, Victor speaks, dripping disbelief.

“You make it sound like he’s a _spy_ , Yakov.”

Yakov narrows his eyes. Victor smiles, slow, delighted, and Yakov groans - interrupts before Victor can start waxing poetic about mystery and danger and _oh, so exciting_.

“Just. Be careful,” he waves at the door, “not every new person is a friend, Victor. He could be just waiting to chew you up and spit you out.”

Victor is practically vibrating in his chair, and he gives Yakov a painfully sincere look of unbridled optimism before he stands and says, merrily:

“A man can dream.”

"A nightmare is a type of dream," Yakov growls after him, rubbing his temples as the idiot lets himself out and lopes away.

He takes a moment, listening to his own throbbing headache, and thinks of the amber bottle three drawers to his right. The memory of Lilia's murderous face is the only consolation, the only balm for the roiling in his gut; at least he’s not alone in his misery. He drops his hands and idly fingers the thin band of space on his right hand that still feels bare, unearthed to blazing sun.

Yakov looks at the papers on his desk. Names and dates and times. He has a mad, momentary fantasy of ‘losing’ them under some very heavy folders in the bottom drawer. Lilia, challenging - Victor, excited - swim across his mind’s eye and he curses to nobody in particular.

 

When he finally leaves his office (whiskey miraculously untouched) it’s to find Katsuki gliding across the ice, Lilia standing rinkside. Lilia’s back is to him; she doesn’t turn her eyes from her student and she looks strangely at home. She barely raises her voice as she instructs, Katsuki nodding, complying without complaint and a determined edge to every line of his form.

Yakov stops beside Victor, who’s tucked himself behind the boards, and fixes him with a pointed look.

Victor either ignores him or doesn’t notice - they’re much the same on his face - and Yakov takes the chance to watch his own student. His eyes are keen, following the slight, dark shape of Katsuki practicing. One finger pressed to his mouth, twitching in the ghost of a thoughtful tap.

Something inside Yakov’s gut loosens. The steady uncoiling of an idea coming to fruition.

It then snags and frays when Victor’s stare turns _delighted_ , lips quirking upwards. There’s a lightness to this smile, and something niggles in the back of Yakov’s mind, like a memory not quite formed. He turns his gaze back to the ice and to Lilia’s student sliding across it.

If he tries, he can see something familiar in the young man’s movements. Something discomfiting, that has him thinking of a theatre, decades ago. A performance - _performer_ \- that had him shaking and sure in his seat. He’d been unsure of everything in that moment, but also, for the first time in his life, he’d felt _certain._

Katsuki spins, and shifts, and the feeling turns from distant dé ja vu to something newer. Sharper.

Once more, his gut tightens, twists painfully. He looks to his left at Lilia, who looks younger than he thinks he’s ever seen her. Victor makes a soft, surprised noise to his right and Yakov knows he’s seen it too.

Yakov stays grim, quiet, and Katsuki happens to look up. He startles when his eyes land on the both of them. Victor waves with one hand and Katsuki blushes - prettily, Yakov notes, with only a modicum of discomfort, because _oh_ , _can he see Lilia’s reasoning now_.

Yakov watches, a long stretch of angry static between his ears and his lungs. Victor is subtly rocking on his feet with each twist Katsuki makes.

Yakov feels Lilia’s eyes on him, and gives her a flat stare in return.

He says nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I'm hoping to carry on with this, but updates won't be for a _long-ass_ while due to a combination of work and other writing commitments, so apologies in advance if anyone wants more and doesn't get it for a bit!
> 
> (No really, I am so sorry, I am the Absolute Worst for writing at anything faster than a snail's pace D:)
> 
> HMU on [tumblr](http://lightningcatters.tumblr.com/) if you ever want rambly headcanons and shitposting, otherwise, have a nice day :D


End file.
